Tea Party Patriots to Organize Mass 'Audit the IRS Rally' in D.C.

4 Jun 2013

The Tea Party Patriots will organize a mass “Audit the IRS Rally” on June 19th in Washington, D.C. with local and national Tea Party groups to protest the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations.

Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, told Breitbart News that the targeted witnesses that testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday “showed the IRS discrimination and abuse had very real consequences on the local coordinators of the groups affected.”

“These were not faceless, amorphous ‘groups’ but real Americans who wanted to peacefully assemble,” Martin said. “Those in the hearings this week are a sample of the thousands of Americans who have been affected by the thuggish tactics of the IRS.”

The Tea Party Patriots, a group that formed when the Tea Party movement officially launched in 2009, finally secured the permit to organize the event on Tuesday only after various delays. At one point in the permitting process, D.C. officials requested information from TPP in a serious of events the group’s leaders said would make “your blood boil” if “you despise government bureaucracy and big government in general.”

In an e-mail blast to local and national Tea Party groups on Tuesday, Tea Party Patriots noted that the rally, starting at noon on the 19th, was important because the IRS scandal is one that crosses party lines and impacts Republicans, independents, and Democrats.

“With all of mess and scandals that are going on in DC, we need to have a big presence to tell them that we aren’t going to take it,” Martin wrote. “We are focusing on the IRS because it is the issue that can cross both lines. No one likes the government abusing its power, and that’s the message we want to convey.”

The group emphasized that the “focus of the rally will be the IRS to try to reach the broadest audience that we can and gain as much support as we can” and asked local Tea Party leaders to “start spreading the word to your groups.”

The IRS has come under fire for deliberately targeting groups applying for tax-exempt status that had “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in their names. The agency naturally scrutinized Tea Party Patriots, a group that had raised concerns about IRS harassment before revelations came to light.

J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, said the abuse of power that he discovered while auditing the IRS was “unprecedented.”

“Together we stand with all of the groups and individuals who were affected and give our fellow Americans the opportunity to see more of the people who have been unfairly abused by the IRS,” Martin told Breitbart News. “We have been fighting for constitutionally limited government for over 4 years. The discriminatory tactics from the IRS and an abusive government will not intimidate us or stop us from fighting for the country we love.”